Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut have safely returned to Earth aboard a Soyuz space capsule after spending more than five months on the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins and cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey
Ryazansky safely landed in Kazakhstan after a 166-day ISS
mission, despite earlier fears of a delay due to severe winter
weather conditions. The mission control center cleared the Soyuz
TMA-10m to land at 3:24 GMT.

Just before entering the planet’s atmosphere, the three modules
of the Soyuz rocket split apart, enabling the central crew module
to navigate toward Kazakhstan’s grassland at atmospheric entry.
In the final stage, the spacecraft's parachute unfurled some 6.5
miles high to slow the descent near the town of Dzhezkazgan.

The space team was met by a Russian recovery team together with
Russian and US medical personnel.

All three will now to be taken by helicopter to Karaganda, from
where Kotov and Ryazansky will fly to Star City, near Moscow, and
Hopkins will fly to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Russian Cosmonauts Kotov and Ryazansky made history after they
took an Olympic torch for a spacewalk for the first time ever
last November. In December, both cosmonauts spent eight hours and
five minutes in open space in Russian-made Orlan-MK space suits,
setting a record for the longest Russian spacewalk.

Japan’s JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin,
and NASA’s Rick Mastracchio are now running the ISS as part of
Expedition 39.